[K12OSN] remote home directories

[Scott Sherrill]

Brandon Kovach wrote:

>I don't know anything about NIS, but I can learn.
>
>I was originally trying to authenticate to my Netware server, but couldn't
>make NCPFS work correctly.  At one point I had it working ... kinda ...
>but it blocked everyone else from the servers.  All of them.  I decided
>that I had enough time in that one and had done enough damage that I
>needed to move on to another solution for now.
>
>  
>


Brandon -

To give you another alternative, I created a poor man's nis system using 
ssh and the followin script:


#!/bin/sh

/usr/bin/rsync -p -e ssh /etc/passwd $1:/etc/passwd
/usr/bin/rsync -p -e ssh /etc/shadow $1:/etc/shadow
/usr/bin/rsync -p -e ssh /etc/group $1:/etc/group


the script is run from the main password server by cron (every 5min) and 
is called with the following command:

pushpass clientserver



then I exported a ssh key from my main password server to each of my 
client servers (so I don't need to login with a password).

So I have 1 server machine, and 5 ltsp servers.  When a user is created 
on the main server, 5 min later they show up on all the ltsp servers.

The reason I did it this way?  NIS is great - does everything I did 
above and more, but from any nis client machine if you do a "ypcat passwd"

you get the password hash:
scott:$1$Kj3gj3Yd$.jx34285SE6N.Ipp1nP1/Q91:2575:825:.....

short time from there for a student to crack that invidual pwd. 

The way I'd do it with the time?  ldap.  But the above works for me.

Just another alternative to chew on.

Scott